“Songs For Young Lovers” (1954)
By Mahnuel Muñoz
On February 27, 1954, the album “Songs For Young Lovers” entered the North American charts of Billboard magazine. Is an exquisite miniature of eight songs and less than twenty minutes long that constitutes Frank Sinatra’s return, on the red carpet, to the close-up of popular music after its long decline at Columbia Records. Preserving his essence as a romantic singer, with this new work Sinatra offers us more reflective, contemplating and singing about love with the ocher halo of a broken heart that, however, keeps its doors wide open.
The selection of songs is a beautiful bouquet of the Great American Songbook that includes melodies written one or two decades ago, which were already popular classics at that time; Frank will return to several of them without rest for the next forty years.
The orchestral arrangements, written by George Siravo (except for “Like Someone In Love“), devised for Frank’s concerts at that time, and adapted by Nelson Riddle for a small orchestra of eleven instruments, provide a graceful sound background that seems to emerge from the while Sinatra sings, underlining his emotions, as if it were a Hollywood musical, but with proverbial naturalness and elegance, a prelude to what awaits us in later works.
The cover is a succinct portrait of the content of the album: a pleasant spring night in the city, the street walked by young couples in love and in the center of the image, Frank Sinatra alone, leaning on a lamppost, elegantly dressed and wearing his hat. that will become inseparable from his iconic image of the ’50s, a cigarette in his hand and a slight smile on his lips that carries more longing than joy.
The album will remain on the charts for thirty-one weeks and reach third position.
TRACK LIST
“My Funny Valentine” (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart) – 2:31
“The Girl Next Door” (Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin) – 2:38
“A Foggy Day” (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) – 2:39
“Like Someone in Love” (Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke) – 3:10
“I Get a Kick Out of You” (Cole Porter) – 2:55
“Little Girl Blue” (Rodgers, Hart) – 2:54
“They Can’t Take That Away from Me” (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin) – 1:58
“Violets for Your Furs” (Tom Adair, Matt Dennis) – 3:05
